Economies of Favour after Socialism

Edited by David Henig and Nicolette Makovicky

Analyses favours in post-socialist regions including Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe; the former Soviet Union; Mongolia; and post-Maoist China

Examines the role of ethics in economics and political life

Potential resource for anti-corruption initiatives and organizations

Contributes to developing and refining methodologies for the documentation and study of corruption and illicit economic practices

Economies of Favour after Socialism

Edited by David Henig and Nicolette Makovicky

Description

Since the onset of the global economic crisis, activists, policy makers, and social scientists have been searching for alternative paradigms through which to re-imagine contemporary modes of thinking and writing about economic orders. These attempts have led to their re-engagement with fundamental anthropological categories of economic analysis, such as barter, debt, and the gift. Focusing on favours, and the paradoxes of action, meaning, and significance they engender, this volume advocates for their addition to this list of economic universals. It presents a critical re-interrogation of the conceptual relationships between gratuitous and instrumental behaviour, and raises novel questions about the intersection of economic actions with the ethical and expressive aspects of human life.

Scholars of post-socialist politics and society have often used 'favour' as a by-word for corruption and clientelism. The contributors to this volume treat favours, and the doing of favours, as a distinct mode of acting, rather than as a form of 'masked' economic exchange or simply an expression of goodwill. Casting their comparative net from post-socialist Central, Eastern, and South Eastern Europe; to the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and post-Maoist China, the contributors to this volume show how gratuitous behaviour shapes a plethora of different actions, practices, and judgements across religious and political life, imaginative practices, and local moral economies. They show that favours do not operate 'outside' or 'beyond' the economic sphere. Rather, they constitute a distinct mode of action which has economic consequences, without being fully explicable in terms of transactional cost-benefit analyses.

Economies of Favour after Socialism

Edited by David Henig and Nicolette Makovicky

Table of Contents

1: Introduction: Re-imagining Economies after Socialism: Ethics, Favours, and Moral Sentiments, Nicolette Makovicky and David Henig 2: The Ambivalence of Favour: Paradoxes of Russia's Economy of Favours, Alena Ledeneva 3: A New Look at Favours: The Case of Post-Socialist Higher Education, Caroline Humphrey 4: Giving, Taking, and Getting By: Help and Indifference in Moscow's Temporary Housing Market, Madeleine Reeves 5: The Anti-Favour: Ideasthesia, Aesthetics, and Obligation in Southwest China, Katherine Swancutt 6: The Human Economy of Pálinka in Hungary: A Case Study in Longue Durée Lubrication, Chris Hann 7: Making History, Making Politics: Post-Socialist Elite Economies of Favour in Bulgaria and the Ukraine, Deema Kaneff 8: Interior Spectacles: The Art of the Informal among the Former Miners in Wałbrzych, Poland, Tomasz Rakowski 9: A Good Deed is not a Crime: Moral Cosmologies of Favours in Muslim Bosnia, David Henig 10: The 'Shadows' of Informality in Rural Poland, Nicolette Makovicky 11: Afterword: The Social Warmth of Paradox, Martin Holbraad

Economies of Favour after Socialism

Edited by David Henig and Nicolette Makovicky

Author Information

Edited by David Henig, Lecturer in Social Anthropology, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, and Nicolette Makovicky, Lecturer in Russian and Eastern European Studies, School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford

Nicolette Makovicky is Lecturer of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Oxford. She is the editor of Neoliberalism, Personhood, Postsocialism: Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies (Ashgate, 2014) and has published extensively on informal economic activity in Central Europe.

David Henig is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent. His research, conducted mainly in the Balkans and Central Asia, focuses largely on vernacular Islam, sacred landscape, exchange theory, and more recently on linking anthropology with global transnational history, diplomacy, international relations, and geopolitics. He has authored numerous publications on Islam, dervish orders, Muslim politics, and post-socialism.

Contributors:

Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute Halle/SaaleDavid Henig, University of KentMartin Holbraad, University College LondonCaroline Humphrey, University of CambridgeDeema Kaneff, University of BirminghamAlena Ledeneva, University College LondonNicolette Makovicky, University of OxfordMadeleine Reeves, University of ManchesterTomasz Rakowski, University of WarsawKatherine Swancutt, Kings College London

Economies of Favour after Socialism

Edited by David Henig and Nicolette Makovicky

Reviews and Awards

"Assembling a stellar collection of authors to address an exceptionally well formed and originalset of questions, this book achieves for favours what Humphrey and Hugh-JonesÃ¢s seminal Barter, Exchange, and Value did for barter: the creation of a sophisticated new category for comparative analysis. It also brings the anthropology of ethics into conversation with economic anthropology in a highly creative way, greatly to the benefit of both: a work of real importance." - James Laidlaw, William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge

"This collection offers a timely and compelling inquiry into favors as the Ã¢power of the exceptionÃ¢ illustrating the rule.Ethnographic accounts of how people strive to live the good life, understood in moral and material terms, take us beyond the familiar condemnatory analyses of corruption and patronage to offer new perspectives on exchange, debt, gifts, reciprocity and the social relations that sustain them." - Catherine Wanner, Professor of History, Anthropology, and Religious Studies, Pennsylvania State University

"This book is not just for scholars of Eurasian post-socialisms. The contributors show convincingly that the centrality of favours to so many dimensions of social, cultural, economic, and political life in this part of the world is fertile ground for advancing broader analytical frameworksÃ¢of morality and ethics, of economy and society, of the semiotics of social life, and a great deal more. Favours have finally earned their own distinct place in social and cultural anthropology." - Douglas Rogers, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Yale University

"In the popular imagination, favours are easily taken as the ultimate proof of the ideological and utilitarian failure of socialism. But the contributions to this volume show that favours are important to all economic formations, including the many invocations of capitalism in contemporary Post-Socialist countries.The ethnographies of favours offer intimate accounts of how new forms of inequality emerge and some old ones continue, of everyday struggles for respectability in volatile situations, and reveal how people navigate complex and contradictory moral demands. This volume illustrates how important it is to take people's own classifications of economic practices serious and that such classifications Ã¢in this case, favours- are fundamental to the advancement of economic theory." - Erik BÃhre, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Leiden

"Casting a bright, new light on favours in the economy, the authors show that favours are embedded in moral and ethical ideals even when they subvert authorized practices.Neither purely instrumental nor mutual acts, neither reciprocity nor contract, favours are anomalous practices in formal economics just as they can be ambiguously interpreted in everyday life. The essays display how productive this ambiguity can be for a flourishing material existence." - Stephen Gudeman, Professor of Anthropology, University of Minnesota